You know Trump’s thinking about making a play for the Times. No way is he going to pass on a magnate schwanz-measuring contest with this much media heat. Yuge:

Bezos, in an interview, called The Post “an important institution” and expressed optimism about its future. “I don’t want to imply that I have a worked-out plan,” he said. “This will be uncharted terrain and it will require experimentation.”

He said, “There would be change with or without new ownership. But the key thing I hope people will take away from this is that the values of The Post do not need changing. The duty of the paper is to the readers, not the owners.”…

Bezos said he would maintain his home in Seattle and would delegate the paper’s daily operations to its existing management. “I have a fantastic day job that I love,” he said.

He and current owner Donald Graham each posted letters to the paper’s staff. Graham’s is interesting for the candor of one particular line: “[T]he newspaper business continued to bring up questions to which we have no answer…” Bezos’s is interesting for its hints at answers to come:

There will of course be change at The Post over the coming years. That’s essential and would have happened with or without new ownership. The Internet is transforming almost every element of the news business: shortening news cycles, eroding long-reliable revenue sources, and enabling new kinds of competition, some of which bear little or no news-gathering costs. There is no map, and charting a path ahead will not be easy. We will need to invent, which means we will need to experiment. Our touchstone will be readers, understanding what they care about – government, local leaders, restaurant openings, scout troops, businesses, charities, governors, sports – and working backwards from there. I’m excited and optimistic about the opportunity for invention.

Bezos is widely understood to be a libertarian, but since he’s less activist in his beliefs than the Koch brothers, his takeover of a journalistic institution is being greeted as a buzzworthy curiosity rather than the opening of the first seal in Revelation. He’s donated mostly to Democrats too, which will help reassure his new employees.

A few points. One: Per DrewM, the combined value of the Washington Post and Boston Globe these days is more than $100 million less than the least valued major league baseball team — or, if you prefer, half the amount that the Qatari royals paid for Current TV. If you’ve got $250 million to play with, what’s a better use of your money, a yacht with all the trimmings or the political influence that comes with owning the paper of record in the capital of the most powerful country in the world?

Two: If anyone can figure out a way to make newspapers profitable in the digital age, it’s Bezos, no? The fears that would normally come with a tremendously powerful online entrepreneur extending his influence by buying up a major paper seem more muted this afternoon, just because his success with Amazon suggests he might have the answers to the questions that Graham mentions. There’s some truth to this, too:

FWIW, rich people owning newspapers has almost always been better for the newspapers than when big chains or public companies own them.

Ace thinks Bezos will keep the Post reliably Democratic in orientation. I don’t know. It may be that he cares less about shaping the news than about the challenge of building a news outlet that succeeds online where others have failed miserably. If I were him, I wouldn’t want any political grief from a comparatively tiny asset like the Post bleeding over into my main business. He just bought himself a lot of cachet. All he can do now is annoy half of his Amazon customers by wielding it in a manner that’s too politically antagonistic.

Three: Antitrust laws are destined for a political comeback in the years ahead, especially as grassroots conservatives turn more populist economically. That’s another reason why I think Bezos will tread lightly in partisan terms — the public’s antenna is already up for GoogleAppleAmazonFacebook expansion, especially after the Snowden leaks highlighted the extent of tech companies’ cooperation with NSA surveillance. The more antagonistic they are to one party or the other, the more traction antitrust sentiment will get on one side of the aisle. And they’ll have enemies in the media too, of course, willing to amplify those concerns. How do you think the NYT will react if Amazon starts promoting WaPo content on its front page?

If you’ve never seen “Epic 2014″ before, watch it now. It was produced in 2004 but it gets more interesting by the day. “EPIC,” at around 6:30, can’t be long now.

Blowback

Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.

I would tell the reporters: Stop censoring the news. Go after everyone in Washington who is crooked, starting with Obama and working your way down. I don’t care if they’re Democrat, Republican, or whatever. Get ‘em. Now git.

“Play money” for this guy. I think the Koch Bros interest in newspapers (I should put a snicker around the news part) has put a panic in the industry (even though I don’t think they were serious on any of the rumored buys).

For anybody with access to a library, check out Mark Twain’s “How I Edited an Agricultural Paper”. It’s a short read but explains a lot.

Or maybe he’s one of those very confused liberal Democrats who thinks he’s a libertarian because we wants weed legalized.

AUINSC on August 5, 2013 at 6:49 PM

I wouldn’t read politics into this investment. Bezos also owns a space company and in the process of trying to acquire NASA launch pads for his rockets.

One of the main challenges facing the internet giants today is in finding media partnerships that aren’t inhibited by paranoia (even when justified), fear, and doubt on the part of the old media companies. Now Bezos controls a major media company that will play nice with Amazon, opening the doors to tighter integration and better distribution through Amazon devices. It will set a standard that other major media players will feel pressured to match. From a business perspective, this is brilliant move and one that isn’t political at its core. It may eventually help increase the value of his Amazon stock by another $200 bil.

I have never heard this claim – where does it come from? The only “political new” we ever hear about Bezos is his support of liberal democrat causes and democrat candidates – is this the “new” definition of “Libertarian”?

From a business perspective, this is brilliant move and one that isn’t political at its core. It may eventually help increase the value of his Amazon stock by another $200 bil.

bayam on August 5, 2013 at 7:27 PM

The hell it will.

WaPo is a bleeder. Amazon is a bleeder.

He’s going to turn WaPo into the paper of record for the Kindle.

It’s all about controlling the op-ed page and owning original content.

But it’s not going to increase company value.

If he can stop Amazon from losing it’s ass on SVOD or fought back internet taxation, then yeah, they would be sitting pretty.

But Bezos plan is to spend and hope his market share covers his costs. Once the spread becomes too wide, he’s in deep crap. So the proactive way to make sure that doesn’t happen is to influence the DC narrative.

Did I read somewhere that Amazon runs at a loss overall? I think I am sure! that I read that.

SouthernGent on August 5, 2013 at 6:45 PM

Their earnings are low as they plow back all their profits into growing Amazon.

I can assure Amazon, with whom I do a LARGE amount of business, that I will cease to do so at the first inkling that The Post becomes any more left than it is. And, that would be quite a loss of business.

this is an minor story compared to the massive story about the media being an arm of the progressive movement. The left has its hands on the throat of all legacy media…who are either ideologues, or afraid to ask questions.

CNN blandly admitted that they didn’t cover Saddam because they would be kicked out of the country. They should have had the integrity to be kicked out and cover Iraq from Kuwait rather than Baghdad…but no, that’s too much to ask

Newsweek itself is almost a parody site, with Features like “my Palestine vacation’, A story about a left-wing gay running for Tel Aviv mayor…and of course, my favorite: The soccer ball that stores electricity.

Bezos is widely understood to be a libertarian, but since he’s less activist in his beliefs than the Koch brothers, his takeover of a journalistic institution is being greeted as a buzzworthy curiosity rather than the opening of the first seal in Revelation a liberal.

He’s donated mostly to Democrats too, which will help reassure his new employees.

I live in the DC metro area, and I never read that paper, even online, except if there’s some weather event. That’s not for ideological reasons either. I don’t read any of the DC papers. It’s just a dead format. Bad investment there Bozos.

There is no map, and charting a path ahead will not be easy. We will need to invent, which means we will need to experiment. Our touchstone will be readers, understanding what they care about – government, local leaders, restaurant openings, scout troops, businesses, charities, governors, sports – and working backwards from there. I’m excited and optimistic about the opportunity for invention.

What explains the Democratic tilt? Bezos doesn’t give many interviews about his politics, but turn your eyes to the donation he gave to the successful 2012 campaign to legalize gay marriage in Washington. Bezos and his wife gave $2.5 million. Nothing we know about Bezos suggests that he differs much from the coastal/Acela policy consensus — which is to say he doesn’t differ much from the editorial board of the paper he owns now.

But he’s not used to owning a media corporation with a strong union culture, like the guild at the Post. That’s the first clash I’m interested in.

so not much change…libs are what they are…technocrat leftists who think that they are the ones to run the world.

so not much change…libs are what they are…technocrat leftists who think that they are the ones to run the world.

r keller on August 5, 2013 at 9:34 PM

Don’t you just love the billionaire limousine liberals who built their companies and made their billions in a low tax environment that was entrepreneur and small business friendly, but who now think higher taxes, more socialism for the masses, and government policies that squelch entrepreneurship and growing small businesses are the way to go?

It’s easy to take those positions once you’ve made a few billion. Especially when you can get the government to enact regulations that will help drive your smaller competitors out of business and salt the soil any future competition might grow in. And if you can use your influence to get special exemptions from government policies you don’t like.

Fascist socialist corporate cronyism is not bad if you are already one of the wealthy economic elites who won’t really be affected.

Hey – for Bayam I thought it was a decent post. Yes – Amazon is actually still a loser from a traditional profit perspective and they “reinvest in the business” really because they need to keep the turns going or the whole thing will collapse.

I personally think he paid way too much for the Post – newspapers in general are dying because of their use as political instruments by liberals which have alienated the only audience interested in continuing to buy newspapers – the more politically conservative. The younger folks want aggregators only. Local papers succeed by catering to a local audience – WashPo and the NYT are dying artifacts. I think it was a foolish buy in as much as their is no reason to suggest he will change the WashPo’s outlook and hence they will continue to bleed money – with reduced turnover, unlike Amazon.

So, in other words the paper will remain the progressive libtard capital of America. Have you ever spent just 5 minutes on the message boards at WAPO and taken in the utter mental illness that abounds?